Relax...

Despite my best intentions, it is hard to make much time to think about the baby growing in my belly. We're at 34 weeks. By this point when I was pregnant with Zephyr, I was pretty much obsessed with his birth, with what he was going to look like, with how it was going to be to have him here. Nothing has changed - I am still obsessed with Zephyr - and the growing baby that now makes getting groceries out of the shopping trolley nearly impossible is coming off second best. 

We went for a walk to the waterfall at Piha Beach a couple of weeks ago. I spent a good five minutes smiling at Zephyr as he gazed, finger pointed almost catatonically, at the water cascading off the rocks above us, before I realised I had not even looked at the waterfall myself. It's funny how your priorities change. 

There has been some focus on the poor little baby in my belly though, as we just completed a course in Hypnobirthing. What an amazingly simple concept! Hypnobirthing, while sounding very new age and left field, is actually just all about staying relaxed. It teaches that if the body is relaxed, birth will happen without much stress or strain, and possibly even without any pain. Sounds too good to be true, but search Hypnobirthing videos on youtube and you'll be amazed by these beautiful, quiet births, where the mothers appear to be in a state of near-ecstasy. Such a contrast to the screaming, screwed up faces we are so used to seeing in movies and on TV.

The mere fact that we hear so many birth horror stories and expect birth to be painful is what causes it to be traumatic for a lot of women, or at least that is what Hypnobirthing teaches. It's all in the head.

If you have ever had a pregnant cat in your house, you will know they often go to a quiet, dim place to give birth to their kittens. Perhaps the reason why so many of us experience stalled labours and 'fail to progress' is because we are in unfamiliar, brightly lit hospital rooms, filled with strangers and machines. It is hard to feel relaxed in such an environment, which is the exact reason I decided to do the Hypnobirthing course. If I must birth in a hospital - and that seems to be the case, due to having had a previous C-Section - then I would like to have a place to go in my head. 

I am slightly anxious to go too far in explaining all this in case I have to take it all back when nothing works out. However, I am also a believer that putting such thoughts out there in the Universe can make them happen, and when I read that sentence, I am not concerned about it coming true. This time around there is nothing wrong with my platelets - they actually increased since last month - and there is no reason why I will have to be induced. I firmly believe (because it is clearly true) that without an induction, and especially without the kind of induction I had, Zephyr would have entered the world in a much different way, so this time there is no need to worry.

I am not quite up to the level of self-hypnosis yet with my Hypnobirthing practice, but I am feeling very relaxed about the birth. The key message for me is that my body and my baby know what they're doing, and when the time comes, I just need to relax and let nature take over. What could be easier than that? 

Breathe....

In the meantime, I have been trying to get ready for the little one. Today I sorted through Zephyr's old clothes and washed the teeny tiny ones. It gave me an odd sense of deja vu, and made me think of how far we have travelled. Zephyr's baby clothes dried for the first time under the dry Queenstown sun, two Februarys ago. Now we are in West Auckland in our own home and I have a 19-month-old running on the lawn beneath them, chanting 'baby!'. Life just keeps on surprising me with its progress.

Ground level

Detail


Elvira’s interest returns to ground level,
its default level, for which she is rewarded:


she is well rewarded for her attention
to detail, reclaiming a safety-pin,


a bottle top and a hair-band from the path,
the safety-pin having a head shaped like a bear.


From Wai-o-tapu she will return with treasure,
some strands of moss teased out from their bed,


some crystals of sulphur carefully lifted,
a hair-band, a bottle-top and a pin.


Treasures to treasure,
a pin to begin.


- Anna Jackson, from Catallus for Children.

I remember reading Anna Jackson’s poetry as part of my English degree. There was one poem in particular which has stuck in my mind all these years; – and this isn’t it, I can’t seem to track it down, although this is on the same vein – it talked of the mundaneness of everyday life with small children and how it can sometimes feel quite brainless. It described the poet’s son turning over rocks and laughing at the bugs he found underneath, and how they lived this experience each day at least once, and yet the boy never seemed to tire of it.

Right now, I am in this poem, but I don't feel frustration so much, as Jackson seemed to; it's more that I recognise how mundane the activities of our day could seem to a bystander, or to someone with a hectic life filled with meetings and creativity and conversation. The way I see it though, there are only a few years of this, probably three or four, before I will have to return to the slipstream of employment, so I might as well enjoy this hiatus in the knee height world of the toddler.

It's a strange world when you think about it. It is a world of tangents. Some days we have an agenda, like Storytime at the library or a playgroup, but some days Mama doesn't have the energy or the transport to get small boy to his activities, so we make good at home. We pretty much drift from place to place, from thing to thing. We get by. Here's yesterday morning for an example:

After breakfast, Zephyr and I got dressed. This involved a giggly nudey run down the corridor (him only) while I chased him, growling 'come back here' in my scary lion's voice.


Then we found his bouncy ball and he went to the top of the stairs and threw it down at me, and I threw it back to him, and it bounced, and we laughed. This went on for around five minutes.


It stopped raining momentarily so we managed to get his gumboots on and a hoodie and then we had to get my shoes and jumper, by which time it started raining again. Played fire engines for two minutes, then it stopped. I love Auckland.


Went outside and splashed in a puddle in the driveway, then splashed in a puddle on the footpath, then back to the driveway.


Crossed the road and looked at some flowers, stroked tree trunks, saw an ant.


Crossed road again. Looked at leaves. Rained again so went inside and read Skippy Jon Jones 123 several times over. Ate mandarin and drank water. Threw muffin all over the floor, used brush and pan to sweep it up, then toddler used brush and pan to 'sweep' the rest of the floor.


The sun came out so went back outside. Walked to the neighbour's place to see if their dog was there. It wasn't. Talked about dogs for a while. Arf-arf.


Watched birds fly past. Talked about birds. Walked up the road. Stopped to climb over planter box around roadside tree, many times.


Went further up the road and saw a bus and a truck. Walked to the main road and watched more buses and trucks and cars. Beep beep.


Went to the corner and pushed the button to cross. Crossed. Pushed the button to cross the other way. Crossed. Repeated until returned to where we started.


Mama mentioned snacks and we started to walk back to the house. On the way we stomped in a muddy puddle we had never seen before. Very good mud. Saw other people's mail in other people's letterboxes. Wanted to take it and had to talk about why we couldn't. Minor disagreement over this.


Saw the cat. Mmmaw, mmmaw.


Reached house and took mail from own mailbox: much jubilation.


Turned over the buckets by back door. Wanted to bring them inside but they were wet, so couldn't. Minor disagreement no.2.


Went upstairs and made a smoothie, which involved a lot of excitement (blender).


Eye rubbing after smoothie, plus a brief stint of lying on the kitchen floor, cued the beginning of the naptime preparation process. Half an hour later, the toddler is asleep.

I won't bore you with the afternoon, but you get the picture. The day is his, and his naptimes are mine. There is really no point in trying to do anything for myself while he is awake. Using a laptop is asking for all sorts of trouble, such as the need to consult the manual to figure out how to change the keyboard back from Arabic. Laundry generally gets unfolded as fast as it can be folded, and pegging it out tends to involve hanging one item at a time before running after the escapee who has taken off towards the road. Not that I class doing the laundry as 'doing something for myself', but you know, it needs to be done.

Anyway, I love it, but I can see how that would be hard to understand for some people, and I can see why some people don't. And I can also see how much more difficult and trying it is likely to get once number two shows his or her face. But as I said before, there are only a few years of this, so we might as well enjoy the chaos before they get all growsed up and we find ourselves in a sad, empty quiet house with no one to mess it up.

Although I'm looking forward to that part too – that's when we travel again! Twenty years to go…

And it begins again...

Blog, I've got something to tell you. I'm knocked up, again. Baby numero dos is due at the beginning of December.

The idea was always to do this baby rearing stuff in one solid chunk, so the sleep-deprivation doesn't span over too many years and age the two of us beyond recognition. And it does seem like a good time. Zephyr has been doing pretty well at sleeping lately, and I think he's ready to have a playmate to poke and tease. Now he's taking a longer nap in the afternoons, I have this weird stuff called spare time. Best we fill that before I go relaxing.

The idea of having a second child brings me to think about how we have done with the first. He seems well adjusted, confident, happy and bright. But what would I do differently next time?

No google

Lucky second children, they get to benefit from the hit and miss experimentation of the firstborn's  babyhood. Generally, I feel more confident this time knowing how quickly (in hindsight) things progress. But when you're stuck in the middle of a month or two of being dragged out of bed three or four times a night, or you can't get that kid to sleep without rocking him for a hour, or he cries all afternoon and you can't figure out why, it doesn't feel like any progress is being made at all.

The tendency then is to google. There are countless forums where mothers in similar situations complain of similar problems. Advice is rampant, and it spews out of the computer from so many viewpoints, it's hard to know what you believe or agree with. But the key is this: EVERYTHING IS A STAGE.

It may be the most aggravating thing to hear when you are in that stage and the stage seems to be going on forever, but it's true. Your little waker will not always be a waker. You little food thrower will not always throw his food. Your little pincher will hopefully not always pinch. By all means, have a think about why he is doing this, and have a go at solving it, but most of all, relax. Don't google, or if you must, find a website you trust and stick with that one. Be patient. This too shall pass.

Those four words shall make up my rather irritating mantra with Baby Deux (who by the way, better know how to sleep).

Feed on

One mistake I made with Zephyr was to leap into solids before six months. I don't think it did any harm, but I don't think it did any good either. The books say breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months will help with immunity, plus it's so easy – why wouldn't ya? Well, with Zephyr I had a mistaken hunch it would help him sleep. I was ready to try anything, and wouldn't listen to the advice that said otherwise.

I also think I was a little bored. We had been trucking along for four and a half months and I wanted to see something new happen. Solids! It sounded like fun to make baby food. It wasn't. Breastfeeding is dead easy once it gets going.

Baby Deux is breast only until his or her half-birthday and not a day before!

Wear it

More of out necessity than any great desire to be an attachment parent superstar (although I do agree with attachment parenting philosophies), this baby is going to be worn.

Zephyr runs pretty fast already and he's only fifteen months. When he's 21 months and Baby Deux is born, I'm guessing he's going to be sprinting. Maybe he will be more reasonable then and not quite so obsessed with exits, but even so, I can see myself wearing this next baby in a sling or wrap pretty much constantly, so that it can sleep and be held while I chase my firstborn.

The question remains: when's my naptime going to be?

Sleeping together

If we do end up with another terrible sleeper, I'm not going to stress about letting he or she sleep with us. In fact, that may be the best arrangement from the start. The best way to get rest with a newborn is to let them feed while you doze. This one's staying in latch proximity at all hours, especially the evening.

The question of the birth

It is clear to me now that I was a little obsessed with having a natural birth when I was pregnant with Zephyr. While I want the same for this baby, I am going to try not to care so much. I know now the outcome is the same no matter what...although I could have done without the months spent getting over the trauma of the induction and resulting C-section...but anyway, the baby will come.

In short, I'm going to try for a normal birth, but I won't let it get to me if it doesn't happen.

Apparently Baby Deux is the size of a lemon this week

What is it like to be a baby?

This was the question answered by psychology professor Alison Gopnik Monday night at Auckland University – part of the Sir Douglas Robb lecture series for 2012. Obviously, I was interested. Spend five minutes with my boy and you will find yourself wondering – how does this kid's mind work?

Five minutes with a fifteen month old:

He's playing the drum – no, he's heading for the door – but wait, he's seen the shoes, he's picking those up and carrying them back to the toy box, they go in the toy box – next: he sees a cup someone has left on the shelf, he reaches for it, can't get it, grizzles for a bit – moves on to the raisin box he discarded ten minutes earlier, eats some, throws it back down – heads to the laundry, pulls some clothes out of the dryer, brings those into the lounge, puts them in a pile, changes his mind, carries the pile back to the laundry, back in the drier – no, out of the drier, on the floor – back to the toy box, take out a car, drive that along the floor and up the wall, drive it to the couch – climb on the couch – there's a book here, open it, look at a couple of pages, throw it down – try to open the curtains above the couch, can't quite do it, gets annoyed – climbs off the couch, falls down, thinks about crying...doesn't hurt, gets up – sees the raisin box again....

I could go on, but I can see you're getting tired. So what is all this in aid of? Well, Alison Gopnik believes babies are like scientists, constantly testing theories and hypotheses, often again and again, in order to learn how the world works.

This makes a lot of sense when you watch Zephyr at play. This morning he was transferring chunks of playdough on the end of a butter knife from his table to a stool across the kitchen. It was a serious matter. I came and sat with him and showed him how I could make a star with a cookie cutter. He was not in the least bit impressed, as clearly this was not part of his current experiment. (Side note: I do wish he would reach a conclusion with his 'what happens when I throw things from the highchair' experiment).

According to Gopnik, there are two ways to learn: exploit or explore. Kids use exploration to learn. This form of learning does not require an end goal; Zephyr was not hoping to find out how well playdough travels or how its consistency changes when it is left in small pieces in the sun (although these are all things I inadvertently discovered while cleaning the floor afterwards). Instead he was simply exploring, doing, trying, and seeing what happens. Kids learn from everything they do.

Adults use exploitative learning; they learn in order to reach a goal, such as reading a recipe so you can bake your own bread, or watching a tutorial so you can use Photoshop. Because we have already done our experimenting as children, we block out anything we feel we already know about. This can mean when concentrating on the task at hand, we can fail to notice quite important changes in our surroundings.

Learning by exploring does not require the use of the frontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for control and impulse. Which is handy, because this part of the brain does not fully develop until the early 20s, and for babies, it is barely in use at all.

Gopnik talked about an experiment involving some adults who were monitored inside MRI machines as they watched Clint Eastwood's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Apparently, their brain activity was very similar to that of a baby taking in the world around them. Gopnik concluded that being a baby was very similar to watching an engrossing movie, which is a nice hypothesis and one that makes sense when you think of how interested and alert little babies are when you place them in a stimulating environment. However, I do wonder just how engrossing that particular film was to the participants.

Another way to see the world like a baby is to travel. Gopnik spoke about how it is possible to feel like a child when you are thrust into an unusual environment. Suddenly all your senses are open and the world feels exciting and brand new. What else makes you feel this way? Being in love.

Surprisingly, cigarettes can bring you closer to a child's view. Apparently nicotine imitates the chemicals that allow you to pay attention, expanding and opening your view of the world, even if your time in that world is short as a result. Caffeine also helps. A cup of coffee has the effect of inhibiting the inhibitor chemicals, meaning you “see” a broader scope of the world even when focusing on a certain task.

So, Gopnik concluded amusingly: Being a baby is like having three espressos and smoking a pack of Malboros while being in love and in Paris for the first time. A beautiful image – and as she was quick to point out, a fairly valid reason for all those night wakings!

So, hey, I done used my brain and watched a lecture and it was good.

Time for a change

My eldest sister had her children a generation before my boy was born (those two are 19 and 21 now, but they're still babies to me), and she chose to use cloth nappies. Back then, this meant doing it the old school way – folding white cotton squares origami style until they formed a padded, triangular shape that could be safety pinned into place and covered with a plastic wrap for longevity. I was nine when my nephew was born and supposed that she spent a lot of time elbow-deep in poo. She probably did, as I can't imagine those old nappies held much in. Thinking of the work involved in all the changes needed for a constantly wet and poopy newborn, I can see how the advent of disposable nappies must have felt like a godsend back in the 1950s when they came about.

Let's think of what else was popular in the 1950s. Plastic plates, cutlery and cups were being marketed as a convenient alternative to porcelain, to avoid having to do any washing up. Everything was becoming throw-away, as companies realised the selling potential behind women's lib movements. Mothers and housewives wanted to be free from the hassles of housework so they could go out and get jobs, travel and experience the world like their husbands did. Plastic was the answer. It was bright, cheap and modern.

The fact that the world could be becoming a little messy was not yet in the minds of the majority of the population. The Earth felt limitless and the impact human beings were having on it did not seem to be problematic. No one thought about whether products were biodegradable or recyclable, although by natural course recycling did happen – think of the old milk bottles.

So much has changed since then. Popular culture is filled with new words such as organic, free range and biodynamic. Plastic shopping bags are being phased out (albeit not as readily as they should be, if we compare New Zealand with the rest of the developed world, but that is another story) and people are re-learning the art of vegetable gardening, meaning less trips to the supermarket, meaning less packaging, less petrol, less waste.

This is all good stuff, and as the popularity of being green and humane increases (hopefully) the choices are likely to become less, to the point where plastic shopping bags are not offered, meat is no longer presented on styrofoam trays wrapped in plastic wrap, and everyone choses free range eggs and chicken, despite the price difference.

I have always hated waste of any sort. I get edgy when there is too much food in the fridge and I know it's not all going to get eaten. I can't stand huge boxes with not many chocolates in them (for more than just environmental reasons). I hate beauty products and toys encased in hard plastic display boxes that are so difficult to break into and completely unnecessary, except that they allow the product to be hung from a hook or displayed in a huge box in a store.

For this reason, I thought that, like my sister, who was perhaps an early re-adopter of the cloth nappy revival, I would use cloth nappies when I had a baby. I was pleasantly surprised when, after becoming pregnant with Zephyr, I visited a baby store and saw what had happened to cloth nappies since I was a child. They have become so easy to use! No safety pins, no folding, no plastic pants, barely any leakage (well...after the babies start solids anyway). The new cloth nappies are basically cloth versions of disposables, with velcro or dome fasteners, absorbent cotton or even bamboo liners, and cute colourful covers. They cost quite a bit to get into, but in comparison to buying disposables, they are still a huge saving.

So why then are not more people using them? When I look around at Zephyr's playgroup, I notice that at least 75% of the children are in disposables, some up to the age of 3. I try my best to understand when I see a child in disposable nappies, but I just can't get my head around the waste.

For one week when my son had a terrible nappy rash, I used disposables to help clear it up and watched the rubbish bin fill at a ridiculous rate. Our small family of three would barely use a plastic shopping bag of rubbish per week, to the point where we didn't own a wheelie bin (we lived in Queenstown at the time, where bins had to be purchased). We would surreptitiously sneak our bag into the neighbour's bin each Tuesday night - I guess we're still dirtbag students at heart. However, that week we had to purchase two council rubbish sacks from the supermarket. Our waste had at least quadrupled.

I'm sorry to anyone who has a good reason for using disposables, and I would love to hear what that reason is, but personally, I just couldn't do it. Disposable nappies take 500 years to break down in landfill. How many generations beyond those of our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, will have to live with the waste generated from your kids' faeces and urine because you didn't want to “deal” with poo or couldn't face doing extra laundry?

Perhaps that is harsh and some coaxing is required. If you're using disposables at the moment, go out and buy a washable nappy. You can get single ones in some stores, such as BabyCity. Buy a box of flushable liners, because they make things a lot less messy. Put it on your baby. This is what will happen: You change your baby's nappy, remove the liner, which will remove at least 80% of the waste (if not all of it), put it in the toilet, flush it. (Note that if the baby has not done any doodoos, it is possible with some brands, such as Real Nappies, to just remove the absorbent liner and replace that without replacing the outer, which means less washing). Put the dirty nappy in the washing machine. Wash it. Put it on the line or in the dryer if necessary. Ta-dah! Done! I have used washable nappies from the start and have barely ever had to soak them and have never scrubbed them. You don't need to use any special products to wash them. You don't need to deal with poo (although I suppose you become a bit more intimate with it than you do with disposables, where it can be wrapped up quickly and thrown away).

When Zephyr was a newborn, I did a load of nappies every day, as he would go through about eight in a 24-hour period. This was slightly taxing in the winter as we didn't have a dryer, but I had a drying rack set up right next to the washing machine. I would take them out, hang them over the rack and let them dry inside. Most brands of washables have been made to be fairly quick to dry. And let's face it – you're doing loads of laundry pretty much constantly with a baby, so what's another load? Now that he is a toddler, he goes through a lot less and I do a load of nappies on average every three days. I still don't bother with soaking or scrubbing.

My point is, it's really, really easy to use washable nappies. You put down at least $500 purchasing the nappies in the outset, but after that, they can be used again and again, and even saved for your child's brothers and sisters down the line. Liners are the only ongoing expense, but they are nothing in comparison to the constant purchase of stinky landfill fillers.

Another positive is the proven fact that a child in washable nappies will be easier to potty train than a child who is used to disposables. This is due to the fact that disposable nappies leave the child feeling unnaturally dry, even when they are wet. Being uncomfortable in wet pants is a very good impetus to use that potty.

A lot has changed since the 1950s. I think I can safely say that no one reading this is a regular user of plastic cutlery or plates in place of washable ones. Most of us are avid recyclers. Why then are we hanging on to disposable nappies? It's time for a change.

Zephyr in his nappy at age 4 months

I'm back

Well, it's been almost a year, but I feel I am ready for a bit more venting. When I look at my previous posts, I almost shudder at the problems I was dealing with then. I feel that if only I could reach back into the past and tell that woman to chill, that it will all pass, and - yes - to trust her instincts, it would have been easier for her to enjoy Zephyr as a difficult youngster. And he was a hard baby to deal with.

He is now a very different boy. At fourteen months, he is now definitely a boy, a toddler and not a baby. Everywhere he goes, which is everywhere he can go, he goes at top speed, on two feet now. He is becoming a parrot, imitating our speech and gestures and learning to say a few words. Pointed fingers indicate he wants his 'atta' (water) or would like to go 'ouside', fingers are pulled back from his snacks when they are too 'ot', hands are thrust into the air when he wants 'up'. There is such a sense of pride watching him learn, I had no idea.

Many times over the past year and a bit I have had the realisation that while having a baby has its moments of drudgery and tears, I have also never smiled or laughed so much. Our little boy is hilarious and fills us with so much joy, it's kind of ridiculous.

Anyway, enough cheese, this post is just to say I am back to blogging and I hope you will follow me through the next year with Zephyr. I have given the blog a bit of a remodel too.

To follow, a potentially controversial post about disposable and cloth nappies. Enjoy.

"Was dat?"